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Weedinhoe's 2016 & Beyond Garden

315K views 4K replies 79 participants last post by  Weedinhoe 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Hello! I am a Georgia veggie gardener and, weather permitting, try to have something going in the garden all year long. I don't have enough space to put up masses of any one thing because I grow a lot of different stuff so the aim is to put up what I can and eat seasonally and fresh.

When I retired five years ago I decided to convert the whole garden to 4'x18' raised beds using 2x8's and lengths of 1/2" PVC pipe around the bed perimeters as stakes to hold the sides and end pieces upright. That will allow me to disassemble and move the beds to another location quickly should the need arise. It's also handy in that I can just remove the end pieces, run the tiller through the beds and then replace the end pieces.

Since I am located on a road and the garden is visible from the road, the plan is to move the beds to the back of the property behind the woods if the SHTF. There's a creek back there for water and a pond uphill from which I can siphon water through hoses.

Here are some shots of my garden.

This pic is from last year but is pretty much what the garden looks like right now:


This is the south side of the garden as viewed from the top of the garden:


And this is a view from the other side:


And finally, this is a view from the bottom of the garden:
 
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#2,093 ·
Today I pulled out the Blue Lake bean plants and found the last half pound of beans along the way. Enough to go with a meal for two! Then, since we've had afternoon showers the past few days, I figured the t-posts that were in the corn bed might be easy to pull out. They sure weren't the other day in dry soil! Sure enough, they wiggled around just fine and came right out.

Eight days ago:



Today:



Now you can see the okra bed. There are two Heavy Hitters on the left and two Choppee on the right. The one on the far right is a lot smaller than the other three. Both varieties just put out their first pod this week. Behind them are the Tahitian Melon squash (one of this year's toys) and the spaghetti squash. Five spaghetti squash have been picked and it looks like that's going to be it with the vines all yellowed out. And the one small Tahitian squash has split with the rain. That whole mess will hit the road tomorrow. Guessing I might find nematode damage on the roots. We'll see.



The little Kaho Watermelon on the trellis is putting out little melons! Baker Creek describes it: "salmon-orange flesh that is delicious right up to the super thin rind... It was also one of the best we’ve tasted. Elongated fruit weighs about 2-4 pounds and is perfect for 2 servings....This rare heirloom was originally brought to Japan from China around the year 1912."




Now... I wonder how I will know it's ripe. It's not laying on the ground so there will be no creamy yellow spot to look for. Maybe the old thump test? Or maybe the pigtail above the stem.

Last but not least is one of Fifth Gear's Sunspot Dwarf Sunflowers with a busy bee on it. These only get 4.5' tall and are pretty without being a massive mess to clean up.

Next time maybe y'all can help me figure out what's munching on green tomatoes!

 
#2,094 ·
This spring I had some extra tomato plants but no more room on the pallets for them so I decided to find a place away from the garden to just plant them directly in the ground as a test. The thought was that the bacterial wilt problem is restricted to the garden soil and that it should be OK to plant them elsewhere. So here's what we call the Tomato Annex. :)



As you can see, they're doing quite well and if there was a problem it would have shown up right when the tomatoes were setting and filling out.

But now there's a munch problem! There is no sign of tomato hornworms and these are not bird peck holes so it must be a varmint of some kind. Do any of you have a guess? Squirrels? Rodents? Possums? Raccoons? I don't think it's deer. These tomatoes were on the lower branches.




Meanwhile, I'm waiting to see if the lima bean pods will fill out. That's always been a problem whether it's the bush type or pole type. Lots of pods, no beans or maybe just the start of a bean in them. These are King Of The Garden pole limas.



Doing more online research about the filling out problem I discovered that lima beans do not like heat and for the first time read that they should only be grown in Zones 7 and colder. Too much or too little water and/or excessive heat will cause poor pod fill. I don't believe it's a water issue. This is definitely the last go for lima beans if these pods don't fill.

You win some, you lose some. At least the Gypsy peppers are a winner! Note to self: only grow ONE plant next year.



Now I need to go look at the popcorn bed. 5th Gear just informed me that the raccoons had a big party there last night. It might be time to do a late night vigil with the shotgun.
 
#2,097 ·
Could be rabbits, squirrels, or even a chipmunk. All of them chomp tomatoes. And they don’t eat the whole tomato. They take a bit of this one, then try out another and another. I would suggest a 22lr so you can save the meat. Or at least have a smaller mess. A shotgun will vaporize a smaller rodent. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Thump test, triangle test, pigtail test. High technology! 🤣
 
#2,099 ·
Well, there's no need for the after dark shotgun vigil near the popcorn bed. It wasn't the raccoons! Inspection of the popcorn bed confirmed 5th Gear's report of devastation. But there seemed to be an absence of pulled over stalks and lots of ears were still on the stalks but husks totally peeled off and cobs mostly totally stripped.







As I approached the bed yesterday afternoon to take pics I heard rustling among the stalks. Locating the source of the sound, I finally saw a squirrel, busily stripping narrow pieces of husk off a cob! He looked at me, I looked at him and he went back to work. Then I caught sight of another one emerging from the other side of the bed with a piece of corncob in his mouth. At that point I hollered, the squirrel dropped the piece of cob and they both beat feet for the nearby pecan tree.

That explains the couple of empty corn cobs I saw at the base of that tree two days ago. It seemed strange but I just blew it off and went about my business. So after chasing off the squirrels I went to that same tree and found more stripped cobs, including some freshly shredded husks.



Then when I went to the house and told 5th Gear about it, she said, "Well, since this morning all the green tomatoes on the four plants in the Annex are gone. There's not a green tomato on them. And when I got near the plants a squirrel ran away from the plants." There are three groups of tomatoes here. One at the bottom of the garden, one beside the house and four plants we call the "tomato annex", extras that were just stuck in the ground on the other side of the house.

Tomato mystery solved too! In thirty years of gardening I've never run into this before. Never. So the question is... why?

We got to thinking about it and this year there's been one change. 5th Gear feeds the birds black sunflower seeds because they don't like mixed bird seed. The squirrels also love the sunflower seeds and gorge on them. A while ago 5th Gear quit refilling the feeders so that the birds would go back to eating the insects that are now abundant. Well, I guess the squirrel population got hungry and decided to go after whatever was easy pickin's!

This morning 5th Gear put back up the regular feeder behind the house and added one in the vicinity of the four plant Tomato Annex. So far there have been no more tomatoes lost in the group that is growing beside the house. And there have never been any lost in the group at the bottom of the garden. Hey, why eat those tomatoes when you can gorge on corn?

If restoring the sunflower seed doesn't work I might get out the .22 for some furry target practice and thinning the herd which has gotten way too large, too bold, fat and happy. Time to change all that.
 
#2,102 · (Edited)
I picked the first little Kaho watermelon today. This pic was taken six days ago and since then it had almost doubled in size with the rain we'cve had. Since it was hanging and not on the ground, there was no yellow spot on the bottom but it thumped right and the pigtail was brown. It weighed 3 lb 9 oz and when cut open it was a light orangy pink inside, just as it was described by Baker Creek.



The flesh was somewhat sweet but the danged thing was slap full of seeds. There were at least six columns of seeds running the length of the melon and those appeared to be two seeds deep. By the time you got all the seeds out there was very little flesh left to eat. It now resides on the compost pile where the possums will enjoy it tonight.

We've had some showers every afternoon or evening for the past four or five days and I've given up any kind of spraying for the time being. More rain this morning. However I was able to get a little work done yesterday morning by running stakes and baling twine along the outside edge of the Big Red Ripper field peas. That will hold them for now but eventually I'll have to run another line higher up.



With the rain comes germination. Yesterday the Stickless Wonder yard long beans popped up. It's another toy. Supposedly it grows 18" long beans on a bush plant instead of on a trellis. We'll see. And the second bed of Red Rippers popped up last night.

Edited to add this pic of one of the tomatoes down at the bottom of the garden. One of the little furry bastiges boldly left it sitting on the wood strips that connect the cages together.



Time to go collect more micro tomato seeds for saving. At least I can get that done.
 
#2,104 ·
The sun is finally out. Three days ago we got 2" of rain and that was pretty much the last hurrah of the front that's been stalled over us. Time to get back to work in the garden.

I bought some neem oil both for the funk and because I'm starting to see leaf footed bugs out and about. I've never used neem before but have done a lot of reading about it so I'm giving it a go.

This morning while it was cool I finally got the popcorn stalks pulled out and the zinnia/marigold bed deadheaded. Pulled two tomato plants from the garden tomato line as one had just totally yellowed up (?) and the other just wouldn't recover from Early Blight. Those cages have been sprayed with bleach and will be put on the two fall tomatoes here at the house. I also had to dig out one tomato, a Purple Russian, from the Tomato Annex that had completely wilted. It's not bacterial wilt and I don't think it's TSWV so go figure. The roots looked fine.

The riding mower's been in the shop for the past ten days with a broken drive belt. Hopefully it will be ready today. Meanwhile, this place looks like the pastures surrounding us. Actually, the pastures look better because the cows are keeping the grass munched down. I mowed the garden with the push mower last evening including a path from the garden to the front porch so my feet wouldn't get sopping wet walking to the garden in the morning. My feet are soaked right now as there were more areas to walk through than were mowed. Sigh... this too shall pass.
 
#2,106 ·
For better or worse, I'm a gardener who hates to admit defeat. If I try growing something and the effort fails I'll try it again the next year, sometimes giving it the proverbial third strike before banning it forever from the garden roster. In between seasons I will do a lot of online research trying to figure out what happened.

A few posts ago I was pondering the bad luck I've had with lima beans except for Alabama Blackeyed Butterbean, a pole variety with small beans. Better than nothing but it too had some problems.

It's been many years since an unsuccessful effort with King Of The Garden pole limas but hey, it's been a long time and I've learned a lot along the way so why not try it one more time? Here's the trellis:



And there are actually a lot of pods on it but as usual they didn't seem to be filling out.



But I guess KOTG is slow to fill and I'll admit my patience sometimes is lacking. But they're finally filling! Yesterday I picked one side of the trellis with the sun at my back. First picking! And I got the other side this morning:



And here's what's in the pods; some smaller and some really huge!



Still, some kind of rust or funk started up at the bottom of the vines a few weeks ago.



But I've been spraying some Serenade on the unaffected foliage and added some neem oil to the treatment regimen two days ago and so far the funk hasn't spread upwards any farther. We'll see.

I'm really happy to see success with limas as this was the absolutely last effort. Now we'll see if I can get some seed for next year from pods left to dry out. Too many times the bugs ruin them!
 
#2,109 ·
Just nine days ago I ran twine down the outside of the Red Ripper field pea bed:



Now with all the rain I’m going to have to add that second run of twine up near the top of the side stakes! At least there’s no sign of aphids yet. They love field peas so I do periodic checks of the bottoms of the plant stems.



Speaking of field peas, 5th Gear used those small Lady Finger peas as a groundcover/underplanting for the sunflowers she planted. The Lady Fingers are rather small and thus somewhat a pain to shell out but they’re really good. On the other hand, because the plants are smaller they haven’t climbed up and taken down the sunflowers! The seeds were from a friend’s garden and given to me but I’m out so I planted what was left and will let just about all of these dry for collection.



Meanwhile the four okra plants (one hiding behind old scallions) are starting to put out more than one pod a day. The side branches are developing, each with new bud clusters. The ”force multiplier” effect! There should be an increase in production soon. Four plants will make all we want and more. In front of the okra is a newly planted second bed of Red Ripper field peas.



When the riding mower is in the shop and there are a lot of splash and dash showers, it’s time for the push mower to make paths to well traveled areas (like the garden and parked vehicles) to keep the feet dry in the mornings. This is just two weeks since the last mowing. Hopefully the mower (broken transmission drive belt) will be ready today.



Today I’ll be starting the scallion and leek seeds.
 
#2,110 ·
I pulled those giant scallion plants in the okra pic above. They had been left to make seeds and since those have been collected and stored away, the plants' job is done. This variety, Shimonita, is supposed to be able to be used like leeks when they get this big. I've trimmed the roots and tops and peeled off the top several tough layers and they're now in the refrigerator until I can figure out what to make with them. Any suggestions?



The watermelon patch continues to creep along. The bees are loving all the flowers. There's one hill each of Black Diamond and Charleston Gray.



Last night I counted five Charlestons coming along but couldn't spy any Black Diamonds. Maybe with that darker rind they're hard to spot in the shadows. Or maybe those vigorous Charleston vines have overpowered the Diamond vines. This one is about 10" long.



As they approach maturity I'll have to protect them from those thieving coyotes. I found that putting a tomato cage over each one and tying the cages to stakes driven into the ground will work. You do what you gotta do!
 
#2,112 ·
She nailed it! This is a lot like I make using ramps when they are up.

 
#2,115 ·
We’ve always had problems getting enough tomatoes to ripen at once to have enough for canning. Some get picked and by the time there are two more pickings, the first ones are going bad. Now the squirrel issue is forcing us to pick even earlier. The tomatoes usually sit in cardboard beer flats to ripen but this year I’ve changed up the process and it seems to be working for the most part. At least a lot better than in the past.

Here’s what we got today. A few almost ripes on top but more half ripes or just blushes under them.



First they get rinsed off well as usual. Then I’ve added the new step of spraying each one all over with a peroxide solution and then setting them on the wire racks of my light stand for more air flow. These are about ready for canning.



It seems to be working a lot better as they’re definitely not going bad as fast. Oh, there are always a few bad spots coming on to cut out but by golly, this year we’re canning tomatoes! The peroxide solution is 12 TBS per gallon of water, which reduces down to 2 TBS + ¾ tsp per 24 oz water for my spray bottle. The spray concentration is one I read about here:

How to Use Hydrogen Peroxide on Your Tomato Plants to Stop Fungal Diseases: Mix Ratios, Spray Routine & Theory

If the peroxide spray would only work as well on the tomato plants but I haven’t been regular enough in usage to make a determination. Too many afternoon showers.
 
#2,117 ·
Today it has been 96 with a 108 heat factor. In this kind of weather the tomato plants won't be setting any new fruit as these temps kill pollen. It happens every year. So it's the annual process of keeping the plants alive until the weather moderates. Hopefully that will happen next week when 80's move back in.

These are the tomatoes up at the house where they get a bit of shade during the late afternoon. The one with all the greenies on it is Homestead, which sets a bit later than the rest.




The two fall tomatoes, one Early Girl and one Siberian, are down at the end and coming along.



Near the other side of the house is what I call the Tomato Annex. There are still three of the original four there. The Purple Russian wilted up and was removed. Left standing are the German Johnson, Super Sioux and Rebel Yell and they've stayed fairly healthy all summer. After the squirrels stripped most of the green tomatoes at least the German Johnson has reset some that are sizing up well.




And these are the tomatoes in the garden out in full sun. They've been affected more by disease and have had about half of their foliage cut off. I've already removed three plants. They're just hanging in there except for the Russian 'Market Queen' and KBX (a 'Kellogg's Breakfast' cross), both of which are putting on more fruit.



Meanwhile the okra and field peas are loving the heat At least something is thriving!
 
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